Compound Words

If you put two or more words together to make a new one, it is a compound word. For example: 'lighthouse' (light + house); 'mother-in-law' (mother + in + law) and 'post office' (post + office). The last word is an example of the so-called open form compound word: the two words are written separately to form a new word.

If you are unsure about whether a word should be one word, two separate words or hyphenated, the best thing you can do is look in a good dictionary, such as the Oxford English Dictionary or Collins. It's better than searching online as these dictionaries are authoritative and are very unlikely to make mistakes. It's also a handy thing to have in your collection of non-fiction books!

This topic is actually quite complicated; however, we'll stick to the common compound words in this 11-plus quiz.

1.

Determine which word is NOT an acceptable compound word.
high school, secondary school, little school, primary school

secondary school

high school

primary school

little school

'little school' could be used to describe ANY of the other schools mentioned in the list. 'primary', 'secondary' and 'high' are specific and can't be used to describe each other. This might be a good way of deciding if a 'word' is an open form compound word or just two words written next to each other

Determine which word is NOT an acceptable compound word.
bathrobe, bathtub, bathsoap, bathmat

bathsoap

bathtub

bathrobe

bathmat

It looks like the soap has been left out of the bathroom!

6.

Determine which word is NOT an acceptable compound word.
daydream, day centre, day time, daylight

daylight

day time

day centre

daydream

'day time' should be written as 'daytime'. This is one of the tricky things with compound words: is it two words or one word? D'oh!

7.

Determine which word is NOT an acceptable compound word.
grand-uncle, grand-aunt, grand-mother, grandfather

grandfather

grand-uncle

grand-mother

grand-aunt

'grand-mother' should be written as 'grandmother': no hyphen! It appears that this also applies to the following: grandma/pa/son/daughter/nephew/niece. It seems that only grand-aunt and grand-uncle take a hyphen